Watch the introductory video by Jacob Robert Steeves, co-founder of Bittensor, to quickly learn more about Bittensor.

Stage I — Subnet Ideation

Design the most promising subnet with strong incentive logic, clear miner/validator roles, and meaningful use cases within the Bittensor ecosystem.

Submission Requirements

Teams must submit:

1. Subnet Design Proposal

Format: PDF, Slides, Notion doc, or GitHub repository

The proposal should include:

• Incentive & Mechanism Design
  
  

  • Emission and reward logic
    
    

  • Incentive alignment for miners and validators
    
    

  • Mechanisms to discourage low-quality or adversarial behavior
    
    

  • How this design when implemented as a subnet qualifies as a genuine “proof of intelligence” or more broadly at least a “proof of effort”
    
    

• Miner Design
  
  

  • Miner tasks
    
    

  • Expected input → output format
    
    

  • Performance dimensions (e.g. quality, speed, accuracy)
    
    

• Validator Design
  
  

  • Scoring and evaluation methodology
    
    

  • Evaluation cadence
    
    

  • Validator incentive alignment

• Business Logic & Market Rationale

  • The problem the subnet aims to solve and why it matters

  • Competing solutions, both within the Bittensor ecosystem and outside of it

  • Why this use case is well-suited to a Bittensor subnet

  • Whether there is a plausible path to long-term adoption and sustainable business

2. Explanation Video

• 5–10 minutes recommended
  
  

• Walkthrough of architecture, mechanism design, and flows
  
  

3. Public Introduction Post

• Short public introduction of the subnet idea on X (Twitter) or other public platforms
  
  

⚠️ No testnet or mainnet deployment is required at this stage.

Stage I Outcome

• 7 teams will be selected based on idea quality and mechanism design.
  
  

• Selected teams advance to Stage II — Execution
  
  

Stage II — Subnet Execution (Testnet)

Validate that strong subnet ideas can be implemented and operate meaningfully on the Bittensor testnet.

Only teams selected from Stage I are eligible to participate.

Execution Requirements

Selected teams must:

• Implement their proposed subnet or miner design on the Bittensor testnet
  
  

• Demonstrate:
  
  

  • Functional miner and/or subnet logic
    
    

  • Working validator evaluation flow
    
    

  • Evidence that incentive mechanisms behave as intended
    
    

Polish is not required, but functional correctness and conceptual integrity are.

About Bittensor

Bittensor is an open source platform where participants produce best-in-class digital commodities, including compute power, storage space, artificial intelligence (AI) inference and training, protein folding, financial markets prediction, and many more. Bittensor is composed of distinct subnets. Each subnet is an independent community of miners (who produce the commodity), and validators (who evaluate the miners' work). The Bittensor network constantly emits liquidity, in the form of its token, TAO (ττ), to participants in proportion to the value of their contributions. Explore the full vision at bittensor.com.